WebProNews

Tag: networking

  • Cisco May Need to Open the Coffers to Remain Competitive

    Cisco May Need to Open the Coffers to Remain Competitive

    Analysts believe Cisco may have to spend big on acquisitions if it wants to remain competitive in a changing tech landscape.

    Cisco built its business on networking equipment for the enterprise, the kind of equipment companies need to run data centers and on-premise networks. As Business Insider’s Aaron Holmes argues, however, Cisco is facing an existential crisis: the cloud.

    Cloud computing is on the rise now more than ever. While the transition was already well underway, the pandemic and rise of the remote workforce sent the transition into overdrive. As more and more companies rely on cloud computing to handle their basic operations, the need for expensive, enterprise-grade equipment to support on-premise networks and data centers drops precipitously.

    As a result, many analysts believe Cisco will need to make additional acquisitions to remain competitive and adapt to the changing industry. Such an acquisition could be of an up-and-coming startup that offers a product or service complimentary to Cisco’s ambitions, or it could be a larger acquisition of an established rival.

    Fortunately, as Holmes points out, this is nothing new for Cisco. The company has a long history of making acquisitions and isn’t shy about ponying up when the need arises. Hopefully, company leadership realizes the current cloud transitions represents one of those times.

  • Microsoft: Flexible Work Here to Stay, Leaders Out of Touch

    Microsoft has released a study of the state of the workplace, finding that flexible work is here to stay, although leaders are out of touch with employee needs.

    The global pandemic has led to monumental changes in the workplace, with companies across the spectrum turning to remote work to stay productive. What happens after the pandemic, however, is very much an open question. Some companies have fully embraced remote work, with no plans to go back to the office, while others are chomping at the bit to bring their workers back in-house. Many others are planning on a hybrid solution, bringing employees back part-time, when needed, but allowing them to work from home most of the time.

    According to Microsoft’s study of more than 30,000 people in 31 countries, flexible work options are here to stay. Some 73% of workers want flexible and remote work options on a permanent basis, while 67% want more in-person time with their workmates than strict remote work provides.

    “Over the past year, no area has undergone more rapid transformation than the way we work,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. “Employee expectations are changing, and we will need to define productivity much more broadly — inclusive of collaboration, learning, and wellbeing to drive career advancement for every worker, including frontline and knowledge workers, as well as for new graduates and those who are in the workforce today. All this needs to be done with flexibility in when, where, and how people work.”

    Interestingly, the study also found that business leaders were somewhat out of touch with their employees, thriving with remote work more than the average employee. This results in a lack of understanding about the challenges many employees still face.

    In addition, the business leaders were “more likely to be Millennials or Gen X, male, information workers, and farther along in their careers. In contrast, Gen Z, women, frontline workers, and those new to their careers reported struggling the most over the past year.”

    Other findings include the impact of remote productivity, resulting in a more exhausted workforce. Without the structure of the office, many calls, meetings and videoconferences are unstructured and unplanned, and many meetings are going longer. All of this results in workers who are more exhausted, feeling the strain of always be available digitally.

    Similarly, Gen Z is finding the transition to a remote workplace particularly challenging. Because of their age, many in this generation are single and just embarking on their careers. As a result, they often struggle with the isolation and lack of networking options more than their older, more established counterparts.

    Microsoft’s survey is an in-depth look at what is working, and what still needs work, in the current workplace and is a must-read for any team leader or executive.

  • The Power of Gratitude and Your Network at SXSW

    The Power of Gratitude and Your Network at SXSW

    A lot of people don’t come to SXSW anymore because they are afraid it isn’t cool.

    That, however, couldn’t be further from the truth.

    SXSW is a week that I look forward to every year to deepen partnerships and relationships from around the world, meet new friends, and interconnect people in ways they haven’t thought possible before.

    How? Gratitude.  Helping people in ways they don’t see as they are trapped in their 4 walls.

    This was the genesis for the Next Action Podcast for me.

    But how would I put it into practice this year? Try to help as many people as I could with no expectations in return.

    Here are a few examples in action:

    HOW I MET QUINTIN COLEMAN

    Many sales and business development people might instinctively try to find the most powerful or valuable person in the room. I don’t believe this is healthy; after all, every person is a universe, and thanks to tools like LinkedIn, people are so interconnected and can help you in ways you’ll never see coming.

    While I was at the LinkedIn Lounge, I came across a beautiful set with great lighting and a number of people were taking pictures there. Quintin was ahead of me in line and just looked so excited to be there, you couldn’t help but speak with him. We even got on the stage and took some photos together.

    After our impromptu photo shoot, I sat down with him and we were talking about his LinkedIn profile.  What many people would have charged for consulting advice, I was happy to give away for free.

    And, as the internet says…you won’t believe what happened next.


    (photo credit @shayna_pdx of @outer_elements)

    Shayna Goldstein, An official SXSW photographer saw what we were up to and captured the moment in this epic shot!

    Even better, she had a chance to check out more about what I do running NowSourcing, and brought her partner Aaron Rogosin for a full photo shoot of our trade show presence!

    (photo credit @aaronrogosin of @outer_elements)
    UNITING YOUR TRIBE

    People that have never attended SXSW may not realize that nearly 300,000 people flock to Austin for the event, so it’s extremely difficult to coordinate meetings without careful planning.  It makes more sense to have a few anchor events and have your tribe come to you vs trying to message people on Facebook only to connect once all of SXSW is over.

    Here were a few such spots in my travels:

    THE MUCKRACK PARTY
    MuckRack Party (photo credit: Jordan French) L-R Jordan French, Tina Mulqueen, Brian Wallace, Adryenn Ashley, Gavin Gillas, Jeffrey Powers

    The MuckRack party provided a great place to meet up with several journalist friends and meet new ones.  Also gave a chance for yours truly and Grit Daily owner Jordan French a chance to finally meet in person!

    #LINKEDINLOCAL SXSW
    (Photo credit: Brian Wallace)

    Building off last year’s inaugural event, Miranda Rose Lozano, Katie Wallace, and I brought getting to know the people behind their LinkedIn profiles it back for a 2nd season at an intimate setting downtown. Great getting to see friends old and new.

    PARTIES AND PANELS BREAKFAST
    (Photo credit: Brian Wallace)

    The second annual Parties and Panels Breakfast was an event for the early birds of SXSW – and a uniting of the SXSW Interactive Networking and SXSW Panel Planning  FB Groups – IRL.  special thanks to Angelique LaRue for running the SXSW 2019 Interactive networking group, Chad Parisman for helping admin, and Krista Mollion for live-streaming the event.

    FILMING THE FILMMAKER

    Towards the end of my SXSW stay, Shauna Arnot filmed me for her Haste and Hustle show.  

    Amrit Dhariwal was kind enough to do the videography and after the set, we had a chance to speak about growing his young presence online.  As he was in need of a proper LinkedIn headshot, I got out my new iPhoneXR and did a great portrait mode headshot on the spot.

    (Photo Credit: Brian Wallace)
    IN CONCLUSION

    And of course, this mindset isn’t just for SXSW, nor is it just a sales tactic. It’s a way of life.  If you still doubt my methods, I’d suggest reading The Go-Giver by Bob Burg. Small mindset shifts make all the difference!

    This post originally appeared on Grit Daily

    cover image: @aaronrogosin of @outer_elements

  • Google Creates a Technical Guide for Moving to the Cloud

    Google Creates a Technical Guide for Moving to the Cloud

    Google has created a guide in the form of a website for companies that are considering a move to their cloud called Google Cloud Platform for Data Center Professionals.

    “We recognize that a migration of any size can be a challenging project, so today we’re happy to announce the first part of a new resource to help our customers as they migrate,” said Peter-Mark Verwoerd,a Solutions Architect at Google who previously worked for Amazon Web Services. “This is a guide for customers who are looking to move to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and are coming from non-cloud environments.”

    The guide focuses on the basics of running IT — Compute, Networking, Storage, and Management. “We’ve tried to write this from the point of view of someone with minimal cloud experience, so we hope you find this guide a useful starting point,” said Verwoerd.

  • Google: Highest-Capacity Undersea Cable Ever Built is Online

    Google announced that the 60Tbps long-haul undersea fibre optic cable from the US to Japan that it invested in has come online as of today, June 30, 2016. The Google Cloud itself will have access to up to 10Tbps (Terabits per second) of the cable’s total 60Tbps bandwidth. This bandwidth will power Google Apps and their Cloud Platform. According to the Google Cloud team “customers will run at the speed of light with this new FASTER undersea pipe.”

    Screen Shot 2016-06-30 at 11.33.57 AM

    “This is the highest-capacity undersea cable ever built — about ten million times faster than your average cable modem — and we’re beaming light through it starting today,” commented Alan Chin-Lun Cheung of Google Submarine Networking Infrastructure. “This is especially exciting, as we prepare to launch a new Google Cloud Platform East Asia region in Tokyo later this year.”

    The new undersea cable system, announced in August 2014, was funded and built by a consortium of internet companies including Google, Singtel, China Telecom Global, KDDI and China Mobile International. The group partnered with NEC to build the cable which came to be known as FASTER for obvious reasons. “From the very beginning of the project, we repeatedly said to each other, ‘faster, Faster and FASTER’, and at one point it became the project name and today it becomes a reality,” said Hiromitsu Todokoro, Chairman of the FASTER Management Committee. “This is the outcome of six members’ collaborative contribution and expertise together with NEC’s support.”

                                          Give us your comments!

    “The completion of the FASTER cable system will provide capacity to support the expected four-fold increase in broadband traffic demand between Asia and North America,” stated Ooi Seng Keat, Vice President, Carrier Services of Singtel Group Enterprises. “By adding network redundancy and ultra-low latency to our existing trans-Pacific cable systems, it reinforces our leadership in international data services in the region and enhances our infrastructure to support our customers’ critical data traffic.”

    “With a state-of-the-art design, the cable system provides continuous connectivity and sufficiently high capacity for cloud, video streaming, analytics and the Internet of Things, that will help spur innovation on both sides of the Pacific to stimulate the growth of the digital economy,” he added.

    NEC’s OCC Factory made the state-of-the-art cables that power the FASTER connectivity system. Check out how they are made below:

    FASTER is the only trans-pacific cable line capable of delivering speeds up to 60 terabits per second using a six-fibre pair cable, according to NEC. “FASTER is the first trans-Pacific submarine cable system designed from day one to support digital coherent transmission technology, using optimized fibers throughout the submarine portion. The combination of extremely low loss fiber, without a dispersion compensation section, and the latest digital signal processor, which compensates for the huge amount of cumulative dispersion at the end of the cable, enable this six-fiber pair cable to deliver 60 Terabits per second (Tbps) of bandwidth across the Pacific.”

    The FASTER Cable System is a 9,000km trans-Pacific cable that lands in Oregon in the United States and has two landing points in Japan, Chiba and Mie prefectures. FASTER connect to all of the major hubs on the West Coast via system extensions including Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Portland and Seattle. Additionally, FASTER will be connecting to neighboring cable systems extends that will allow it to bring high-speed internet access to many other nations in Asia.

    “This was the first trans-Pacific submarine cable built solely by NEC Corporation, employing the latest 100Gbps digital coherent optical transmission technology. We are honored that the consortium entrusted us to build FASTER. Although we faced many challenges during the construction, I am truly glad that we were able to overcome these and to welcome this day,” said Kenichi Yoneyama, Project Manager for FASTER at NEC’s Submarine Network Division. “This epoch-making cable will not only bring benefits to the United States and Japan, but to the entire Asia-Pacific region.”

                                       Join the discussion here.

     

  • NASA and Google Evangelist Use Interplanetary Internet to Test Robot

    NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have successfully controlled an educational rover from the International Space Station (ISS) using the “interplanetary internet.” In late October, ISS Expedition 33 commander Sunita Williams used a laptop on the space station to remotely drive a LEGO robot (not the one pictured above) at the European Space Operations Centre in Germany.

    The experiment used NASA’s Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) protocol, which is based on the delay-tolerant networking architecture developed in part by Vint Cerf, Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist. In the newest experiment, DTN was used to simulate an astronaut in an planet-orbiting vehicle controlling a robotic rover on a planet’s surface.

    “The demonstration showed the feasibility of using a new communications infrastructure to send commands to a surface robot from an orbiting spacecraft and receive images and data back from the robot,” said Badri Younes, deputy associate administrator for space communications and navigation at NASA Headquarters . “The experimental DTN we’ve tested from the space station may one day be used by humans on a spacecraft in orbit around Mars to operate robots on the surface, or from Earth using orbiting satellites as relay stations.”

    DTN enables standardized communications similar to the internet, but over interplanetary distances and through the time delays in communication with spacecrafts orbiting other planets or soaring out in deep space. The protocol accounts for disconnections and errors, and data moves through the network by hopping. Bundles of data are temporarily stored in nodes, and then forwarded to the next node when a link becomes available.

    (via co.Design)

  • LinkedIn Announces the New LinkedIn Profile

    At a rare announcement event today, LinkedIn announced the “new” LinkedIn, which includes an updated profile page.

    “[It’s] one of the biggest changes to a pillar product in LinkedIn’s history,” said Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn CEO. Weiner introduced today’s event, which was a rare Apple-style live announcement for LinkedIn.

    After Deep Nishar, senior VP of products at LinkedIn, highlighted how quickly LinkedIn is growing (50 million new members this year), Aaron Bronzan, product manager at LinkedIn, took the stage to announce the new LinkedIn profile page

    Bronzan stated that LinkedIn’s design goal was to simplify the page and provide new tools to provide relevant insights to LinkedIn members so that they will use the service every day.

    At the beginning of the event Weiner made the point that LinkedIn users are now updating their profiles even when they are not currently looking for work. The biggest change to the LinkedIn profile page, streamlined profile editing, reflects this.

    “We’ve taken profile editing and re-built it from the ground up,” said Bronzan.

    Members can now edit their profiles in-line, changing things on the fly. The skill endorsements that LinkedIn rolled out last month have also been made simpler, and members can now endorse specific skills for people in their network with one click.

    To provide members with those relevant insights Bronzan mentioned, LinkedIn has provided new tools that display profile information and network connections in a more visual style. Activitiy is now front-and-center at the top of the profile, to encourage members to interact on a more regualr basis. There is also a tool that compares members’ interests and skills when visiting the profile of someone they’ve connected with, or other other helpful information to help connect with people they do not yet know. Members can also now filter through their connection’s connections with a search feature, allowing them to find people with specific skills to network with.

    The new LinkedIn profile rolls out to members starting today.

  • LinkedIn Adds Skill and Expertise Endorsements

    LinkedIn today announced a new feature called Endorsements. The feature will allow LinkedIn members to endorse each others’ skills and expertise.

    Over on the LinkedIn Blog, LinkedIn Product Manager David Breger explained how the new feature will work. Users will be able to see their connections’ recommended endorsements at the top of their profile and confirm that the person actually has those skills. Users can also add areas of expertise they believe their connection possesses. Endorsements can also be given from the Skills & Expertise section of a connection’s profile. From the blog post:

    Want to see who has endorsed you? We’ll notify you via email and on LinkedIn whenever you are endorsed. You can scroll to the bottom of your profile page under “Skills and Expertise” to see the faces of people who think you’re great at what you do. You can also accept any new skills recommended by your peers that you may not have thought to include on your profile. Or you can also add a new skill by clicking on “add a skill” on your profile page

    The Endorsements feature launches today in English, but LinkedIn stated it will be available in all LinkedIn-supported languages in “the next few weeks.” A Slideshare presentation accompanies the blog post and shows how the feature is meant to work:

  • If You’re Trying to Meet Real Goals, New Tool Goalee Could Help

    With so many new social services rising up, it’s hard to keep them all straight, let alone, take the time to try each of them out. However, one new social service takes a little different approach by aggregating data from existing social networks and utilizing it in a way that helps individuals meet real goals.

    The tool is called Goalee and, according to its co-founder James Brown, is a combination of LinkedIn and eHarmony. Although it’s not geared toward either online dating or professional networking in particular, it is designed to help people find the connections that they need to meet specific goals.

    James Brown, Co-founder of Goalee “Who you are as a person can help you build new connections,” said Brown. “We pull in who you are as a person and your professional background from LinkedIn and the people that you follow [and] the things you talk about on Twitter… all those things combined to help you build new connections.”

    As he explained to us, Goalee is necessary because both LinkedIn and Facebook are effective in bringing users’ existing network online, but can be tough to use when trying to network with brand new people. He believes that they lack a rich recommendation system that helps users discover people they’ve never met, but should, based on their networking goals.

    “You can’t really do what we’re doing if you use just LinkedIn or just Facebook,” Brown pointed out.

    “We’re not trying to be the new LinkedIn or the new social network for networking,” he continued, “we’re trying to help you have a better experience on the sites that you’re already using by recommending the best people for you to meet.”

    In a nutshell, Goalee creates a persona of each person based on the data it has aggregated. From there, users can list goals that they hope to meet. In return, Goalee’s natural language processing matches users with each other, ranking them according to the most common interests that they have.

    “It’s all about getting you as quickly as possible to the best people for you to meet,” said Brown.

    Aside from its Web efforts, Goalee is also utilizing mobile and is integrating with services such as Foursquare and TripIt. At this point, the service is free, but later this year, it will be also offering a paid service that will give users the opportunity to have unlimited goals and receive unlimited connections.

  • Not on LinkedIn? Here’s How to Start. [Infographic]

    It may sound trite, but if you want to be hired in 2012, you are going to need a LinkedIn profile. The website tops all other social networks when it comes to finding jobs, and adoption of the site is still growing. The site itself has made some recent improvements, releasing a well-designed iPad app and purchasing online slide presentation startup SlideShare.

    If you don’t already have a LinkedIn profile, however, the prospect can be daunting. You could simply transfer the information on your resume to the site, but that alone isn’t likely to land you a job. As with any social network, the key with LinkedIn is to be social. Make contacts, and inquiries to build your social network of possible employers or co-workers. Show off your previous work and market yourself. Using the site is much the same as other social networks, but if you need some help with the details, the folks at mindflash have got you covered. They have prepared a cheat-sheet full of all the tips you need to make your LinkedIn profile effective:

    LinkedIn Bootcamp: tips to get your profile in shape

    (mindflash via Daily Infographic)

  • The Social Job Search [Infographic]

    The Social Job Search [Infographic]

    The job market may be getting better as we enter into 2012, but finding a position that meets your employment requirements and suits your skill-set is harder than ever. In fact, one of the most difficult challenges employers face is finding qualified candidates to fill their open position.

    This next infographic from OnlineDegrees.Com addresses the issue of being seen in a job market full of applicants. How do you get recognized? You have to be found in the same circles your prospective employers travel in. It used to be called networking, now we call social networking. All kidding aside, you have to make connections with the right people. Platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter make networking easier than ever.

    If you’re looking for a new job or you want to shed the shackles of your current position, you need to study this graphic. Knowing the ins and outs of social networking as part of your job hunt is literally going to put you at the head of the pack. If you don’t have a presence on the same social media sites potential employers are using, you won’t get that vital opportunity to appear on their radar. Take a look:

  • Social Networking Shortcuts Finding Medical Experts

    It can be difficult for someone outside of a specialist field to identify subject experts and the ever increasing amount of available data can be bewildering. New research, published in BioMed Central’s open access journal, Journal of Biomedical Semantics, describes a method of social network analysis, similar to finding friends on Facebook, able to sift through scientific literature and news articles to identify opinion leaders and media experts.Pharmaceutical companies and public health programs rely on opinion leaders to clarify and condense research into a format understandable by the general public and employees. While there are already computer programs which are able to link scientists and medical doctors to their areas of knowledge, this is the first system that is able to identify the opinion leaders from these subject lists.

    A team from Lnx Research developed an extraction engine, which used text mining technology, to produce a network of subject experts, and find people, organisations and locations associated with a specific heath topic from research articles. The three sets of results from the search were combined, and, using simple rules, people with the most ‘hits’ who were most likely to be the opinion leaders were identified. Social network analysis was then used to generate a ranked web of linked experts, based on the number of times they were mentioned together in news articles.

    The team tested their program, using the topic ‘obesity’, and generated a network of over 16,000 experts with 100,000 links between them. The people at the heart of the network, with the most connections, tended to be the subject experts. In about an hour this ‘find a friend’ system found experts on obesity with an accuracy of about 90%.

    Dr Siddhartha Jonnalagadda who led this research explained, “This amount of data would be impossible to sort through without the help of a computer. However when we analysed the results from the program we found that the top twenty obesity experts had all contributed significantly to the advancement of science in the literature and in the news, many having won awards for their work.”

    Dr Jonnalagadda continued, “We were also able to identify a group of people who, although they were not publishing scientists, were still experts, most likely involved in public education or in science reporting.”

    So although the system was designed with the aim of finding scientific experts it was also able to find celebrities, and people with a high media profile, who support a particular cause. This information would be invaluable to scientists, students and people wanting to get straight to the heart of a subject.

  • Identified.com Grows to Two Million in Six Months

    Startup Identified.com is meeting with remarkable success in its mere six months of existence. The Facebook-based data analytics company has doubled in size nearly every month since its September 2011 launch.

    The company owes its success primarily to users from the younger generations. According to Appdata.com, current Identified users average just 23.5 years-old, with 90 percent under 35 and nearly 60 percent under 25 years-old. Users under 35 years-old make up only 40 percent of competitor site LinkedIn, which appeals more to older demographics.

    “The Facebook generation does not exist on LinkedIn, which is dominated by more experienced professionals, or on outdated job boards, which are not in tune with the social generation,” said co-founder and co-CEO Brendan Wallace. “Identified’s young users love that they can create and control their professional profile online separate from their Facebook profile. This is clearly resonating with them. At this rate of growth we expect to hit 25 million active users by June, predominantly under age 35.”

    A two-way street serving both job seekers and HR departments, Identified’s driving concept is the Identified Score, a metric derived from the work history, education, and demographic data of 247 million Facebook users, as well as the hiring behaviors of thousands of companies. In short, when you create an Identified profile and link it to your Facebook account, the company’s algorithms digest your life’s details and let you know where you fall–from 0 to 100–on the hiring desirability scale. Recruiters then use this score to identify likely candidates, and to rank applicants based on their qualifications. If you don’t like your score, you can add further information to your account and see if that makes a difference. Participating companies are also assigned an Identified Score.

    Identified looks to have identified a market niche pretty well in choosing to go after Millenials. Members of this generation are already at home in their existing social profiles, and are pretty shrewd about emerging social platforms. To gain their patronage, a new platform has to be intuitive, useful, and–generally–easily linked to their other accounts. Identified has made it easy for Millenials to integrate their data into the new platform.

    The company is also aggressively marketing their services at events that attract talented young professionals, like this year’s Game Developer’s Conference.

    What about industry leader LinkedIn? I wouldn’t delete my profile just yet. Identified may be making waves early in its young life, but even its projected growth to 25 million users will be a drop in the bucket compared to the older, more experienced platform’s 150 million. LinkedIn’s profits may have slumped in 2011, but the company will likely dominate user share for quite a while yet.

  • Meeteor Helps SXSW Goers Network

    Meeteor Helps SXSW Goers Network

    With an estimated 48,000 people registered to attend South by Southwest (SXSW), networking with the right people would be a daunting task. Startup Meeteor is helping make SXSW smaller and more network friendly.

    Meeteor is a networking service that uses Facebook to help users get introductions with professionals to help their career, discover new work connections, and create an employer friendly Facebook profile.

    Normally the service asks users which companies and industries the user wants to connect with when creating new networks. They have now launched a unique version, specific to SXSW, that asks users what their interests are in relation to the conference, to help create these connections.

    Topics include Mobile, Web, BBQ/Booze/Swag, Dating Services, Startup Analytics, and Gamification, among others. Just enter in your interests and Meeteor takes you to profiles of other professionals that share them, even Meeteor founder Philip Cortes.

    Meeteor's founder, Philip Cortes

    Just click “Introduce Yourself”, leave a personal message and make plans to meet at the conference.

    “We connect you with the best possible people,” Cortes says, “not just people who happen to be around you.”

    @eli_rubel
    Eli Rubel    So many companies w/ location based interest/friend pairing apps ( @highlight @meeteor ) at #SXSW how am I supposed to keep my cell charged! 37 minutes ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @PatrickRuffini
    Patrick Ruffini    I’m meeting cool people at #sxsw through #meeteor. You should too. Unless you hate meeting cool people… http://t.co/5jQqID5b 4 days ago via Tweet Button ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @SarahPrevette
    SarahPrevette    Checking out #meeteor – an app promising to make valuable connections between people at #sxsw: http://t.co/FnepK6cd 5 days ago via Tweet Button ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

  • After Five Years a Couple Finds Dream Baby by Networking on Facebook

    Seth Edlavitch and Melissa Segal decided to explore less conventional methods in their desire to become parents after a devastating miscarriage. After five years of trying to bring new life into the world, the couple decided to post the following message on Facebook: “Loving, professional couple looking to adopt a newborn in the U.S. Melissa has been a fourth-grade teacher for 11 years, and Seth works in public health. We want to build our family through adoption with love, laughter, fun, and passion.”

    The couple had no idea how many people they would be able to reach because Seth only had 40 friends on Facebook at the time. John, a FB friend shared the post and within weeks the distraught couple were given the lead that they had been hoping for. Lisa, an employee of one of John’s friends, confessed that she was pregnant and could not afford to care for her unborn child; she had several other children and was considering giving the baby up for adoption.

    In a frenzy, the couple phoned the 8 month pregnant Lisa as soon as they heard about her situation. The parties decided to meet at a local Starbuck’s to exchange profiles and review medical and health histories. Lisa liked the couple and decided to start the adoption process with them.

    Weeks later Lisa, gave birth and the couple became the parents of one bouncing baby boy, Noah Benjamin.

    Noah is now three and the couple is hoping to find a brother or sister for him. The happy family plans to use social media to advertise their hope to adopt again.

  • Interview: How New Startup Nicira Could Change the Future of Networking

    Cloud computing is a topic that we’ve heard more and more about in recent years. The concept is truly incredible and has given businesses much more flexibility as well as a means for saving money.

    Up to this point, memory, storage, and CPU have all been virtualized. However, the network has not been virtualized until now. Nicira, currently one of the most talked about startups, officially launched earlier this month, and it prides itself with providing this unique element. The platform is built on OpenFlow technology, which is a standard method of communicating to switches.

    Martin Casado, Co-founder and CTO of Nicira “We’re decoupling applications from the network, much like applications have been decoupled from the server,” said Nicira Co-founder and CTO Martin Casado.

    As Casado explained to us, compute virtualization provides many benefits from a server perspective. From the perspective of a data center, on the other hand, a lot of those benefits are lost since the applications are still coupled to the network. As a result, there are many limitations.

    Nicira says it eliminates these issues with its Network Virtualization Platform (NVP).

    “We allow the benefits of virtualization to be able to extend to the data center,” said Casado.

    The software develops virtual networks in cloud data centers. Communication is normally disrupted when workloads are transferred between data centers, but, according to Casado, Nicira creates an environment that recognizes everything as virtual. For this reason, the transfer of workloads is seamless.

    “It doesn’t know that the world has changed, and therefore, all of the communication goes undisrupted,” he said.

    How does Nicira’s platform compare to physical network innovations? Let us know.

    In a recent interview, Nicira’s CEO Stephen Mullaney was quoted with saying the software platform is “the missing piece of cloud computing.” Casado agrees and explained that, without network virtualization, cloud computing as a whole is underutilized.

    “To really take advantage of compute virtualization and to really gain the benefits of the cloud, you need to virtualize every aspect of infrastructure in the data center,” he said. “The one that has really been the long pole has been the network, and that’s the piece that we’ve tackled.”

    Despite some reports that suggest Nicira could have a negative impact on networking giants such as Cisco, Juniper, and HP, Casado told us that Nicira’s platform would not replace or change these players. Instead, he said it would “augment” or “supplement” them.

    “We don’t change physical networks, [and] we don’t change any of the gear,” he pointed out. “We add a new layer, which uses this in a way that’s more flexible.”

    “In the future, you will have both the virtual networking layer, which will be provided by companies like Nicira, and you will still have the physical ones provided by the traditional vendors,” Casado added.

    Nicira already has an impressive client list that includes eBay, AT&T, and Rackspace, among others. These companies are finding that, with Nicira, service delivery has gone from weeks to minutes. In addition, they are saving millions of dollars.

    Although there are some questions being raised about the platform, Casado told us that there are many different approaches to solving this issue and that numerous methods are necessary to do it correctly. He also indicated that Nicira would be virtualizing more services in the next couple of months.

  • Why Is LinkedIn Underutilized?

    Is LinkedIn one of the first sites that you visit each day? If you’re like me, it’s not. (That is, up until this report! ☺) The reason for this is not because LinkedIn isn’t valuable. Instead, it’s just hard to make time for it, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and all the other sites that demand so much time.

    Do you find yourself struggling to make time for LinkedIn? Let us know.

    The site is often equated with finding a job, and while this is a very big part of LinkedIn, it’s not everything. According to Nicole Williams, LinkedIn’s Connections Director and founder of WORKS by Nicole Williams, the professional network should be viewed as a “career toolbox.”

    “Where it may end up being deemed as forgotten is that people don’t realize how helpful it is in your day-to-day career development,” she said. “LinkedIn is designed to help you in your career totality.”

    “It’s not just to be used at the point in which you’re looking at a job,” Williams added.

    As she pointed out, LinkedIn should be used in continuous career development. It’s full of news, forums, and groups that could create valuable opportunities. The relationships and connections that are made on LinkedIn can play a significant role in helping people get into their desired careers.

    Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ are all useful in their own way, but they are very different from LinkedIn. Facebook, specifically, covers a user’s entire life (especially once the new Timeline feature officially rolls out) from personal vacation pictures to fun activities and events that the user participates in.

    LinkedIn, however, is different because it offers a professional forum to individuals. As Williams explained, it provides “distilled information,” which is necessary for a professional environment. The company also has features such as LinkedIn Today that helps users stay up-to-date on industries they are interested in.

    In addition, LinkedIn recently introduced a Volunteer Experience and Causes field to its service that allows users to display their charity inolvement right along with their work experience. Based on a survey the company conducted, 41 percent of the respondents said that they considered volunteer work just as valuable as paid work experience.

    Williams told us that this new feature is especially beneficial in this economy, since so many people aren’t able to work in jobs that are reflective of their true passions. The Causes field now allows them to actually get credit for their volunteer experience.

    “You have to set yourself apart,” said Williams. “What LinkedIn is hoping to do is allow people to set themselves apart by being able to offer up their volunteer work experience.”

    The truth is – there are a lot of ways to use LinkedIn that people aren’t taking advantage of. According to Williams, LinkedIn Groups is a powerful means for people to connect with individuals not only in their industry but also in other industries that they are interested in. Groups also can give a user the opportunity to become a leader in their industry by participating in conversations.

    “You can get exposed to people who are beyond your normal realm of influence and get to know people who may, in fact, get to be able to offer you something professionally; or, you may be able to offer them something professionally,” she said.

    Williams told us that, as a new mom, she is involved in several groups related to professional women and working moms. Through a conversation she had about being tired, she met a sleep coach and, after talking with her, hired her. She told us that the chances of them connecting in another way would have been extremely slim.

    “If you can just engage in conversation and offer up tidbits of advice that prove that you’re a legitimate, helpful individual, that may turn into a real business opportunity,” Williams said.

    She also said that LinkedIn would continue to build products that would enhance the lives of professionals and make it easier to connect with other professionals.

    While it is difficult to keep up with all the social networks, Williams told us that LinkedIn should not be underutilized because it could really impact a person’s career for the better.

    After reading this, are you going to make more time for LinkedIn?

  • Japan’s Earthquake Shows The Strength of Social Networking

    In the US, we can only imagine the devastation which occurred in Japan, and continues to occur as reports roll in concerning higher death tolls and more people missing. One of the scariest factors many don’t consider when an event like this occurs is how the avenues of communication shut down.

    Telephone lines are reported to be down for most of Japan, and getting a hold of loved ones is a difficult task to undertake. As reports surface, messages from Facebook and Twitter provide the latest news. Doing a bit of research shows how the human spirit can be found within the social media platforms.

    Kotaku, a video game related site, posted an interesting article concerning how many japanese video game developers are tweeting their experiences. One developer went so far as to open their studio doors to strangers, relying on Twitter to accept invitations.

    Masahiro Sakurai, a famous video game developer posted a startling image on Twitter of an almost always crowded Tokyo road being completely deserted.

    Deserted Tokyo road

    George Takei, a famous japanese-american actor, has been tweeting non-stop trying to inspire people to donate to the Red Cross.

    @GeorgeTakei
    George Takei    RT @BBC_WNA Kyoto news reports about 88,000 people missing: http://bbc.in/h2nC0S Text REDCROSS to 90999 to give $10. 23 minutes ago via HootSuite · powered by @socialditto

    Obtaining information about where to find shelters has moved to Twitter as well, with locations being posted on Google Maps. And lists of locations becoming available as well.

    @TimeOutTokyo
    TimeOutTokyo    Shelters have been open to people stranded in Tokyo tonight. The full list here. http://bit.ly/idHCRT #Tokyoearthquake 6 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    @TimeOutTokyo
    TimeOutTokyo    A Google map of all the public shelters open tonight in Tokyo. It’s in Japanese, but it may help. http://bit.ly/hM50Jd 4 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    As WebProNews reported earlier, earthquake related tweets have been trending all morning. People have been expressing concern, and sympathy as the death and missing tolls rise.

    Tsunami warnings have been issued to various locations around the Pacific Ocean, and millions of social media accounts will be staying tuned for the latest updates. Let’s hope we don’t have to receive any.

  • Netgear Talks Ramifications of Transition to IPv6

    It was recently revealed that the pool for IPv4 addresses had been depleted, meaning that the protocol for the Internet as we know it has been used up, and the transition to the next-generation IPv6 is beginning. 

    Drew Meyer, Senior Director of Marketing for Networking product vendor Netgear shared some thoughts on the transition with WebProNews. 

    "It’s a big deal for companies of all sizes because it is a fundamental change in the way the Internet works, but it is also a very subtle transition for most users," says Meyer. "Small businesses that keep older networking hardware in service longer may find they need to upgrade – but only once their networks break down. Channel partners play a key role in educating small and midsized customers."

    Drew Meyer Talks IPv6 transitionOn what kinds of techniques businesses can embrace while they gear up for the switch to IPv6, Meyer says, "The old and the new (IPv4 and IPv6) will coexist in most networks. Modern servers and software have provisions for dual mode support, but older equipment may require replacement since it cannot support the latest software patches and firmware upgrades. We expect this to happen invisibly as network equipment is refreshed driven by other solutions, like virtualization or mobile access."

    "We see it as a side benefit of modernizing midmarket networks and have plans for it across our entire product line of managed, smart and unmanaged switches," he adds.

    "Developing markets like China and new applications like mobile devices and home automation demand more Internet connectivity than ever before, so first movers are positioned to become the new leaders of the next generation Internet," he says. "Winners offer simple ways for smaller companies to adopt, and losers will be those vendors who do not educate their channels and end users on the availability of the new function. Midmarket customers purchasing reliable, affordable and simple solutions will be automatically prepared for the IPv6 transition."

    World IPv6 Day has been set for June 8. On that day, major web properties like Google, Facebook, and Yahoo will join content delivery networks like Akamai and Limelight Networks for a 24-hour global trial of the new protocol.

  • Check Out These LinkedIn Groups If You’re in PR

    If you work in PR, chances are you have one of three needs:

    * A need to build or grow your network.

    * A need to acquire new skills or hone existing ones.

    * A need to find a new job.

    While you could argue many social networks meet these three needs adequately, I might argue that LinkedIn has the biggest potential to meet these needs best when it comes to professional skill-building, networking and job-seeking.

    But, are folks capitalizing on that opportunity within LinkedIn now? Not so much.

    I started to write this post about the 12 groups all PR people should be a member of, but after some initial research, I couldn’t identify 12 I could really recommend.

    Most groups (some pretty reputable brands even) were chock full of SPAM–job postings and blatant self-promotion in the Discussions pane and overall, just a lack of effective community management within the group.

    I was a bit disappointed. Like I said, a few of these groups were reputable, larger organizations. I was expecting a little more.

    But, there were a few groups doing it right. And, I most certainly would recommend joining the following post-haste if you haven’t already:

    * PRSA-your local chapter (varies). Obviously, this one depends on your local chapter. Ours here in Minnesota is pretty active–and productive. In my view, it all depends on your local community.

    * MarketingProfs (9,782 members). Even though this group doesn’t technically fall within the “PR” bucket, it’s a “must join” for any communicator or strategist. It’s one of the more active LinkedIn groups I’m a part of right now. For example a recent discussion around starting a Marketing 101 class solicited a whopping 204 comments!

    * Solo PR Pros (726 members). Selfishly, one of my favorite groups. Regular updates (sometimes, multiple discussion threads each week) and numerous people weigh in. Within this group, solo PRs discuss new tools, budgeting and books to read. Kellye Crane does a fabulous job managing and directing this community.

    * PR News Group (5,336 members). Fairly engaged group with relevant discussions to anyone who works in PR. Most recent–and popular discussions–include: “How to conduct PR without an agency”, “Wikileaks is the Facebook of whistle-blowing” and “Have you ever tried the press release distribution services?”

    * HAPPO (1,099 members). Jobs are the focus, but this group is about much more than just the search. And, with another HAPPO event coming up early next year, this group may be on the rise. Recent conversations have focused on: salary requirements, what employers want to see in an entry-level portfolio and the best free software to create an online portfolio. (Disclaimer: I am the co-founder of HAPPO and one of the community managers of the site).

    Any other groups you’d recommend?

    Originally published on Arik Hanson’s Communications Conversations.

  • Unplugging From Social Media and Getting Social (And Original)

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